A Change of Climate: A Novel (8 page)

They came into Table Bay in the rain, in drizzle and cloud which lifted from moment to moment, then descended again. Through the murk a solid dark mass became visible. “Table Mountain,” someone told her. A pancake of gray cloud lay over it. The sun broke through, gleamed, was gone—then sent out another searching ray, like an arm reaching into a tent. She could see the contours of the mountain now—its spines of rock, and the ravines and crevices steeped in violet shadow.

What had she expected? Some kind of municipal hill. “Look there,” a man said. “That’s Devil’s Peak.” The cloud was moving now, billowing, parting. The sun was fighting through. The stranger took her arm, and turned her body so that she saw a wisp of cloud, like smoke, rising into the sky.

The Archbishop of Cape Town said, “You’re not like your Uncle James. You’re more of a muscular Christian.”

“Oh, James,” Ralph said. “No, he’s never looked strong.”

“But he has endured,” the archbishop said. He seemed to relish the phrase. It gave a heroic quality to James’s life. Which, Ralph supposed, it really did possess. From some points of view.

He wished he could have avoided this interview. They did not merit a prelate; only James’s letter of introduction had brought them here. They could have gone straight to Johannesburg by rail, and on to Elim. They could have been briefed by an underling from the Pretoria diocese. Or not briefed at all. Frankly, Ralph had expected he would have to muddle through. It was the usual way.

“I wanted James here with me,” the archbishop said. “Some seven years ago. When I was raised to this—ah—dignity. We had here, at that time, everything one could require. Churches, schools, hospitals, clubs. We had the money and the men. We had the blessed opportunity of leadership. Well, perhaps James saw what would come of it. I cannot claim I did.”

The archbishop limped across the room, setting up little vibra-tions in the furniture, making the teacups tremble. He was a vast, heavy man, seventy years old or perhaps more. He handed himself to a sofa; grunting with effort and pain as he lowered himself, he maneuvered his stiff leg and propped it on cushions as if it were a false limb, or as if it belonged to someone else. It was a moment before he spoke again. “We set out with high ideals,” he said. “The things we wanted have not happened. Well, there was no promise that they would.”

The archbishop seemed shy. Could an archbishop be shy? He spoke gruffly, in short, broken phrases; the phrases were, none the less, well planned.

“A year before I was enthroned,” he said, “the electorate threw out Smuts and put the Nationalists in. Then certain laws were enacted, which I presume you know everything about—or if you do not, you will know shortly. You will learn the theory. You will see the practice. You will see that we have come, in effect, to be a police state.” He broke off, waiting for Ralph’s reaction. “Oh, be sure I did not always talk in this fashion. I gave the elected government what leeway I could, for one tries to play the statesman. I understood the machinery of their laws, but I did not know how they would operate it.”

“Apartheid is hard to believe in,” Ralph said. “I mean, you’d have to see it to believe it.”

The archbishop grunted. “
Separateness,
they used to say. It is the change of language that is significant—it is rather more than the evolution of a term. But I said to myself, when Daniel Malan came in, he is not an oaf. He is a cultured man. He has a doctorate,” the archbishop broke off and gave a short laugh, “which he got from the University of Utrecht, with a thesis on Bishop Berkeley. Malan has still some regard for public opinion, I told myself. Then behold, out goes Malan, in comes Strydom, who as you may know was at one time an ostrich farmer. Educated where? Stellenbosch and Pre-toria. He is a man from the Transvaal. You will learn what that means. When J. G. Strydom came in I had my moment of despair. That was three years ago now.”

Anna made a tentative movement, in the direction of the tea tray. The archbishop nodded to her, then turned and addressed himself to Ralph.

“You have heard of the Bantu Education Act. They have put you in the picture in London, I hope. You know our preeminence in education; the churches have done everything, the government nothing. It is we who have educated the African. We did not know, when we were doing it, that we were going about to embarrass the government. All we have achieved, as they see it, is to create a threat to them. By this Act they mean to remove the threat.”

“I find it difficult to get my mind around it, I suppose,” Ralph said. “Education is progress, would you not think, it is civilization? I can’t imagine that any government in the history of the world, until now, has set out to make time run backward.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the archbishop said. “There would be some. It doesn’t do to generalize. But you see why they’ve done it, don’t you? Education for the non-Europeans is now put into the hands of Dr. Verwoerd, at the Native Affairs Department. Dr. Verwoerd’s reasoning is, what is the use of teaching mathematics to an African child? A laborer doesn’t need mathematics. Give him mathematics, he will begin to think he might try to be a little more than a laborer. Well, Dr. Verwoerd would not want him to make that mistake.”

Anna brought the tea. The archbishop tested it. “Very good, my dear,” he said, “Such a pleasure, tea, isn’t it?” He looked, Anna thought, as if his pleasures were few. She melted away, back to her tapestry stool.

“The notion is to bring in a new kind of education,” the archbishop said, looking into his cup. “An education to create coolies and houseboys and fodder for the mines. Two and a half hours a day, taught by little girls who have scraped through their Standard VI. This is not merely the prescription for the children of the illiterate, this is for all—for the children of our brightest mission boys and girls, for the children of university graduates from Fort Hare. The parents have to contain themselves in patience while they see their children stultified.”

“It seems to cut off hope for the future,” Ralph said. “You can repeal other laws, but how will you undo the effect of this one?”

“Precisely,” the archbishop said. “In twenty years’ time, or in forty years’ time, when this idiocy is over, how will you put wisdom into heads that have been deprived of it?”

The archbishop’s hand shook a little now. The teacup seemed to be too much for him, as a delicate piece of china might be too much for a bear. Anna darted forward, took the cup, returned it to the tray. He did not appear to notice her.

“And so now, how are the churches situated?” The old man turned his head toward Ralph. “We sit before the government ’like the rabbit before the cobra,’ as Father Huddleston has so memorably expressed it.” His voice was dry. “Father Huddleston has a gift for the vivid phrase, has he not? Some people say we should close all our schools rather than take part in this fantastic scheme. Others say that any education is better than none. Father Huddleston, if I may quote again, calls that sentiment ’the voice of Vichy.’ Mrs. Eldred,” he turned his head again, stiffly and painfully, “although you are a trained teacher, you will find yourself engaged in amusing children rather than teaching them. We have to try to get them off the streets, where they will get into trouble. This place, you know, Elim—well, it is not in my cure, but I can tell you something of what to expect. Elim is what they call a freehold township. Africans have been settled there since the turn of the century. They have built houses, they own them. Generations have grown up in Elim. There would be, I don’t know, fifty thousand people?”

“About that,” Ralph said.

“And now there is no security anymore, no guarantee of what succeeding years will bring. They are knocking down Sophiatown, and Elim may be next.”

“Where will they put the people?” Anna said.

“Ah, this is the essence of the apartheid policy, my dear. The government wishes to return them to their tribal areas.” Turning his head again, he spoke with grave, weary courtesy, as if he were addressing the president himself, and giving him all the credit he could muster for a foolish scheme. “Well, you will grasp the situation better when you arrive there. But you must understand that for the people you are going to live among everything has become hazardous, impermanent. It is hardly possible for them to step out of doors without wondering if they are falling foul of some new law. And they feel that their futures have been taken away.”

“I hardly feel equal to it,” Ralph said. “To such a situation.”

“Then why did you come?”

He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t say, to get away from my family. “I thought it was my duty to try to do something. We both thought so. But we have so little experience.”

“Oh, you have youth,” the archbishop said, “therefore you have resilience. That is the pious hope, at least. May I advise you? In your work, try to relate everything to God. Try to work on the scale of eternity. Do you see? Otherwise you will be fettered by trivia. The daily frustrations will cripple you.”

“That seems excellent advice,” Ralph said. “Good advice in any circumstances. If one could follow it.”

Anna said, “If I were a black person in this country, I’m not sure I would believe in God. Particularly.”

The archbishop frowned.

Ralph said, “People may think that when they are so oppressed, when they are told that their nature is somehow inferior, when they have suffered so many misfortunes, that they no longer matter to God. It would be a natural thing for them to think.”

At this the archbishop gave vent to his sentiments, in short bursts of rhetoric, like barks. He referred to “feeble secular humanism” (which he supposed to be a temptation to Ralph) and to the Christian faith as “the charter of man’s greatness.” It was clear that these were phrases from a sermon he was writing, or from one which he had already delivered. Anna looked sideways at Ralph, from under her eyelashes. She didn’t know how either of them had dared say what they had said. They would do anything, she supposed, now that they were so far from home.

When the archbishop had finished barking, she put in a feeble, conciliatory word. It was only that they were inexperienced, she said. They were apprehensive—here in a new country, in their first real jobs.

“Do you also not feel equal to it?” the archbishop inquired.

“I am not sure anyone could be.”

This was a good answer. “Well, I know I am not,” the archbishop said. “There are two things—no, three things—I ask of you, particularly. Try not to despise your opponents; try not to hate them. It will probably be quite difficult for you, but for a Christian the effort is necessary. And try not to break the law. You have not been sent here to get yourselves into the newspapers or the magistrate’s court. I hope you can remember that.”

“The third thing?” Ralph said.

“Oh yes. When you write home to England, ask your people not to make hasty judgments. It is a complicated country, this. I comfort myself that there is little real wickedness in it. But there is so much fear, fear on all sides. Fear paralyzes the sympathies, and the power of reasoning. So it becomes a kind of wickedness, in the end.” The archbishop looked up, nodded. The interview was over. They rose. Unexpectedly he smiled, and patted at his leg, lying before him painful and inert. “Do you know what I did last year? I went to Tristan da Cunha. I expect you did not know my diocese ran so far. They had to tie me into a chair and run me down the side of the frigate on ropes. Then I had to lie in a little boat with a canvas bottom, and they paddled me ashore. Your uncle James wouldn’t have believed his eyes. But you know, I don’t think I’ll go again. I hardly think I’d weather it, do you?”

He didn’t expect an answer. A secretary ushered them out. He was picking up papers to read as they left the room.

Outside Anna said, “The Winston Churchill imitation, do you think it’s deliberate? Do you think he’s studied from recordings?”

“I’m sure.”

“He practically accused us of not being Christians.”

“We are, though,” Ralph said. “Despite provocation.”

“His heart’s in the right place,” Anna said.

“His heart’s irrelevant, I’m afraid.”

At Cape Town Station, the signs said SLEGS VIR BLANKES. The non-European carriages were tacked on like an afterthought to the end of the train.

At stations up the line, children gathered around the carriage doors, their hands cupped for small coins.

At Johannesburg, the station was bustling with black men in slick suits with cardboard briefcases, and with florid white farmers come to town. Their hair seemed insufficient to cover their great heads. Their bellies threatened to burst the buttons of their shirts. Great rufous knees, exposed beneath khaki shorts, butted at the future. Beneath the pavements, Ralph said, were diamonds and gold.

It was cooler than Anna had expected, and the air seemed thin. She shrank away from the hooting and snarling of the traffic and the mosaic of faces in the street. At midnight a noise brought her to the window of their modest hotel. Hailstones—frozen chips of ice, an inch and a half across—rattled at the glass. The bombardment lasted for five minutes. It stopped as suddenly as it began. For an hour, deep in the watches of the night, the city was quiet, as if holding its breath.